In the year 1670, a few English gentlemen, 'the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading to Hudson's Bay,' obtained a charter from King Charles II. The company consisted of but nine or ten merchants. They made large profits by bartering English goods with the Indians of those wild, and almost unknown, regions for furs of the fox, otter, beaver, bear, lynx, musk, minx, and ermine. The company established forts, and garrisoned them with Highlanders and Norwegians. The climate was too cold and the food too coarse to attract Englishmen to the service. The forts, or posts, were about a hundred and fifty or two hundred miles apart, and to them the Indians resorted in the spring of the year with the furs obtained by hunting, snaring, and other modes of capture
